stone-cutters
2013
tone-cutters
Editor-in-Chief Jamie Chang Visual Arts Editors Cosima Elwes Madeline Lear Emma Lesher-Liao Danielle Stolz Alisa Tsenter Literary Editors Julia Aizuss Louly Maya Staff Sophie Kupiec-Weglinkski, Melanie Krassel, Angela Knight, Lauren Lee, Alessandra Marenzi, Jason Park, Lucas Foster, Gil Young, Alexander Ravan, Patric Verrone, Gaby Romano, Tara Stone, Merissa Mann, Anser Abbas, Kacey Bae, Hannah Kofman Faculty Advisors Amber Caron English Department Sasha Watson English Department Alyssa Sherwood Visual Arts Department Cheri Gaulke Visual Arts Department
Special thanks to the Chronicle and Kathy Neumeyer Front Cover: Doesn’t Make a Difference by Luke Soon-Shiong Back Cover: Babble by Merissa Mann Stone-cutters is a Harvard-Westlake publication for prose, photo, and art. The fonts in this issue are Garamond and Adobe Garamond Pro. Printed by Sinclair Printing.
contents
A Silent Observer // Alisa Tsenter 2 Unbearable // Mazelle Etessami 3 The Blue House // Louly Maya 4 Hands and Feet // Madeline Lear 5 Untitled // Emma Lesher-Liao 6 California // Savannah de Montesquiou 7 And some more // Hannah Kofman 8 Pretty Boy Swag // Darby Caso 9 Jungle // Savannah de Montesquiou 10 Untitled // Xenia Viragh 11 A Dead Shirt // Deborah Malamud 12 Kemang // Kallista Kusumanegara 13 Wave Cycles // Alyse Gellis 14 Untitled // Emma Lesher-Liao 15 Poem Without a Single Heart in It // Julia Aizuss 16 Don’t Know About That // Conor Cook 17 Backstage // Lucas Simon Foster 18 Self Portrait // Jamie Skaggs 19 Justin Carr 20-21 Sometimes I wish I had beautiful things to say // Hannah Kofman 22 Untitled // Maria Gonzalez 23 Nude Self-Portrait // Matt Leichenger 24 Sea // Daniel Modlin 25 Untitled // Mazelle Etessami 26 Over Under // Jamie Chang 27 Abstract Appetite // Teddy Leinbach 28 Miscellany // Kallista Kusumanegara 29 Sanskrit Tattoos // Xenia Viragh 30 Theme for English III // Justin Carr 31 Oriental // Chelsea Pan 32 the Prince // Angela Knight 33 When You’re Lowkey Heated // Luke Soon-Shiong 34 Lull // Alisha Bansal 35 Poem for Wyatt // Gil Young 36 Untitled // Maria Gonzalez 37 A Twiggy Contemplation // Danielle Stolz 38 Ice // Bea Dybuncio / Lincoln // Gil Young 39 Sisters // Deborah Malamud 40 Worry-Wart // Wendy Chen 41
A Silent Observer Alisa Tsenter
2
Unbearable Mazelle Etessami
3
The Blue House My grandparents’ house used to sit right there Where wild weeds cover the empty. I close my eyes and remember The house, in all its glory, before it fell. The creaks, the dust, the cobwebs I never appreciated when I was young. I feared the blue house from a young Age, and the dark corners that lived there. An attic of desks, all empty Except the one in the corner, I remember. The drawers opened and old photographs fell But remained unseen as I ran from the accompanying cobwebs. They lived everywhere, those cobwebs, Spun from various mothers and her young. My grandmother, a friend of the eight-legged visitors, sat there, My grandfather across from her, the room empty Of noise, yet filled with affection, I remember, Before the cracks in the foundation fell. My grandfather, the rock, suddenly fell As pneumonia bloomed from dust and cobwebs. My grandfather, not as strong as when he was young, Fought, and my mother flew there But suddenly his plaid chair would remain empty. His five o’clock martini we drink to remember. My grandmother crumbled slowly, I remember And Mother Nature took her merciless time before she fell. In her honor, the spiders spun a masterpiece of cobwebs. We found photographs, letters, journals of my young Grandparents through the house, here and there, And suddenly, it did not feel so empty. For a long time it stayed empty, Save for the memories I will always remember, And on a hot summer day, the house finally fell. I cried for the creaks, the dust, the cobwebs, But most of all, that someone new, someone young Will never know the love that lived there. The sad, young beauty of the lot fell As cobwebs lost their treasured home and as empty People ceased to remember what once was there.
4
Louly Maya
Hands and Feet Madeline Lear
5
Untitled Emma Lesher-Liao
6
California Savannah de Montesquiou
7
And some more When she reads his palm she tells him it is a crescent. She tells him there are secrets in it, undefined luminous secrets she says. And he rolls the world with his eyes. When I close my eyes I imagine them. Whether the secrets stand side by side, jabbing shoulders awkwardly aligning elbows. Or maybe a single file line, collapsing as dominos, as waves until shore and hell break. I hold the crescent, tight. I feel the craters first, and then wrap around the shadows. I imagine the secrets again. I feel under the wrist for a mass, a cluster. She asks him if the crescent is Io or Europa. He shrugs. I think it’s Io, the scorched red earth. Tumbling of rocks and rage. The way his skin burns right through in the heat. Maybe Europa if I think about the way his eyes turn cold and glacial when he walks home. The tears when it finally thaws. I bump shoulders as I wait on the subway. She asks him if he thinks the crescent was waxing or waning. She tells him it’s waning. She tells him to hurry and buy roses or a new pillowcase. Now I shrug. How much more time before full moon? Hannah Kofman
8
Pretty Boy Swag Darby Caso
9
Jungle Savannah de Montesquiou
10
Untitled Xenia Viragh 11
A Dead Shirt I wore a dead person’s shirt. I was young, but not oblivious and I didn’t believe in ghosts. So there was no last time, no last word. I wore her. And my mother, not only unflinchingly but as though there was no reason to shudder told me to wear it in good health. I spent some time inventing memories after the funeral I didn’t go to. And I thought death a boat shipwrecked. Because it must have purpose – one which, unless searched for, is not found. And I spent a lot of time breaking my own heart. I curled into the arm of my One Month Stranger, half hallucinating, and mused to him that there are only two things one can be. Three, he said. Alive, dead, and in love. It rang in my ears as he didn’t kiss me. I soaked my tears in a dead person’s shirt and then I lost it, and death’s a boat. Deborah Malamud
12
Kemang Kallista Kusumanegara
13
Wave Cycles Alyse Gellis
14
Untitled Emma Lesher-Liao 15
Poem Without a Single Heart in It after Jack Spicer When my veins are empty I want you to say, I’m here as many times as you are, your presence a constant affirmation, I’m here as you cross your knees, scratch your shoulder blades, pick your nose, I’m here. The rest is up to you. Cut off your hands, your lips, your life, surrender your body to the birds. Everything can go so long as what remains of you lingers in place: red knee imprints, relieved itches, crumpled tissues, birds with full beaks calling. Julia Aizuss
16
Don’t Know About That Conor Cook
17
Backstage You write poetry for girls, and it sits. You drink the juice, and wake up a bit, but the lines grin, like babies. Your initial reaction: IT IS her, and she has transformed, and this is good. Next, you’re wrong, and the smile shirks its duty, embarrassed. Click and clap, she needs to be quiet, and she did, she shut up, and you can work without force. I reread it, her, and it was crap, without the boost. ‘Wherefore art thou gone?’ That’s not my style, never has been. Maybe, years later, you’ll see her cry; she’d never WEEP, but she must have the capacity to cry. Relevant songs that were once forbidden may even become audible, and you may even find the word, theoretical and or literal, ‘THE WORD.’ Thank your god, Spindrift, Spinoza, Adonai, thanks, guys, for, for editing; it’s an ability. Lucas Simon Foster
18
Self-Portrait Jamie Skaggs
19
20
Darkest in water, brightest on stage. - Justin Carr
21
Sometimes I wish I had beautiful things to say. Sometimes when I’m walking on the train tracks I see water running through them, and then I see my blood running through them. The thin red canals, veins of the city. And then I wonder what the spine is. The airport? No that must be the mouth, with mistaken words. And how the people of the city must just be thoughts. Why do thoughts die? We hate ourselves just a little more, a little less. Ten minutes later I’ll still be walking, turning around the familiar corner. I think I could lose my eyes and still get there. City eyes? Maybe they are the windows, but I don’t know, that would make cathedrals flies. I approach the fence that has always been there, where previous painters and decorators like dogs marked their territory. Then I walk back. Sometimes I wish I could control myself. I paint my toes a muddy green, the color of the ocean. I wash my glass in the sink and wonder if I’ll sleep tonight. I do the easy ones. Skin is the houses, toenails, the swept up leaves. I wash my hair in the sink, an attempt to fade the dark streak underneath. I think about the girl who convinced me to dye it. She must have been an afterthought on the city’s part. Sometimes I think if I could just throw things out it would be better. Pain is something I was always keen on. There was a time where I ate or didn’t in earthquakes. The damage done increasing exponentially. Around the same time I exercised in earthquakes, and that same time my bones were fragile like smiles and visible through my shirt like smuggled goods. I wasn’t sick. I was just in my own skin. My own thin deflated chipped at skin. And for once my outside vaguely resembled my insides. Sometimes I think about if I have a homonym, something that asks questions like me but has a different purpose. Today I passed by a dead crow without a pause. But when the feathers ruffled in a pocket of air I turned. I imagined it the moment before it went still. Still past the point of feeling rain in its feet. The kind of still where loose hail would collect like unswept dust, freezing the broad frame over. Still when the breathing sea of tiered ebony would simply stop like a worn-down watch. The drive of curiosity would end, and that would be it. I’ve never thought death wasn’t a choice. Always I am alone. And I think sometimes, how do the thoughts combine? How do cities hold hands?
Hannah Kofman
22
Untitled Maria Gonzalez
23
Nude Self-Portrait Matt Leichenger
24
Sea Jaws ajar, our eyes equate, The soil sieves the brine. Your Whip crashes – lacerates, My flesh inhales saline. As your dark and heavy fist, Proceeds to maul the Earth. Your wrath and I can’t coexist, We are from different hearth. But it’s too late! I’m ripped back in! I’m swirled amidst your churn. Chicanery is to our chagrin. Ahoy! Gaze upon a stern! Through filled eyes of horror still, I remain your tenant - Damn God’s Will! Daniel Modlin
25
Untitled Mazelle Etessami 26
Over Under Jamie Chang 27
Abstract Appetite Death:
Doom - Blackberry Destruction - Artichoke Ruination - Fresh Asparagus Armageddon - Pinto Bean Judgement Day - Lima Bean Doomsday - Black Bean Suicide - Blueberry Suffering - Dragonfruit Fear - Pumpkin Sadness - Leek Pain - Prickly Pear Melancholy - Honeydew Melon Nostalgia - Prune Failure - Brussel Sprout Darkness - Plum Chaos - Orange Frustration - Beet
Life:
Joy - Basil Laughter - Pineapple Contentment - Warm Cranberry Peace - Kohlrabi Hope - Rosemary Enlightenment - Starfruit Color - Kiwi Morality - Apple Love - Peas Admiration - Avocado Excitement - Turnip Order - Cucumber Light - Daikon
28
World:
Fire - Habanero Pepper Ice - Mint Air - Watermelon Earth - Eggplant Water - Rice Gold - Cantaloupe Wood - Mustard
Other:
Spontaneity - Potato Anticipation - Tomato Planning - Raisin Foresight - Carrot Teddy Leinbach
Miscellany Kallista Kusumanegara
29
Sanskrit Tattoos Xenia Viragh 30
Theme for English III after Langston Hughes
The instructor said, “Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true.” I am an only child. Not one of three, Just me. I go to a school where I feel like a fly in a bowl of milk. Alone. Walking down halls where I am one of three… or at least one of the few with dark skin like me. The kinks in my hair and the dark skin I wear connects me to the trailblazers who struggled to clear paths in order to make my journey easier. As I walk through the white halls with the white walls, I see the footsteps of Martin, Malcolm, and Coretta before me. Their pain and suffering endured just so I can be me, Free. In my classroom, I don’t sit in the back waiting to be called on because the sea of seats are all available to me. It’s hard for me to imagine Being stationed in the back just like my mother and father were, where they couldn’t even see, that they were lacking opportunity. I turn on the TV to see faces with brown tones Sing through microphones, Not of yesterday’s sorrows, As the wounds have healed leaving scars of remembrance. Then I look back at me and what do I see? Not a rapper or a ball player, But a boy with dreams. Goals. Promise. Opportunity.
Justin Carr
31
Oriental Chelsea Pan
32
the Prince Crouched low, weighed down by a gun and his own will, the boy glanced back and forth from his father to the pines. He was nervous and his rifle pressed into his shoulder, Beaded palms securing the other end of it. Dark brown eyes darting around at a quick pace, double checking to see if there was still dirt on his father’s old hunting jacket. He had been thinking of how dark the woods were and then he saw it, a young stag. His antlers were only stubs and his muscles rippled under his glossy coat. The black muzzle twitched and the boy held his breath before glancing at his father, who gave a simple nod. Just like in his video games and his dad’s old hunting stories, the boy raised his rifle and gazed into the scope. He could see the buck better now. Then, more of a twitch than a decision, he pulled the trigger.
The only thing you can see are his unchallenged eyes, his victoriously muddy jacket, and the messy, soft blond hair coated with mud and dirt. The boy drags his feet to the warm body looking it up and down before his moment is interrupted by his father, who asks him to help him haul the body. He stops when he realizes that the blood on his hands is not his own. What kills him the most is that the buck was half-grown, like him. No one will ever know it was a mistake, or how many times he’d cried at night because of it. But people see him as a man now, and he respects that. With a tightly closed thin line for a mouth and his hands shoved into his pockets, the boy with the steady gaze was the boy who killed a deer.
Angela Knight
33
heat signature Luke Soon-Shiong
34
Lull Alisha Bansal
35
Poem for Wyatt My mom leans down and holds the bowl up To the boy whose name is Wyatt. He’s wide-eyed at everything except the candy, And I remember him walking around our yard earlier today And being wide-eyed at the plants and the dirt. He’s sitting in a wagon, red, just like the one I used to Ride around in on Halloween when I was his age, And his eyes—two pools of holy water Or two dilated maps, caught in the black fluorescence That turns most of us into ghouls. He looks up at me and not-smiles And for a second it’s just me and Wyatt, Humming the same tune, wearing The same dinosaur costume. For a second, We can do the Monster Mash in peace. Gil Young
36
Untitled Maria Gonzalez
37
A Twiggy Contemplation Danielle Stolz
38
Ice Bea Dybuncio
Lincoln The light on the dashboard is all Broken up into a million little hills, All the edges are blurred And I can’t take my eyes off of them. I cruise around for a while, I think it was Some fuzzy number, And the windows are all rolled down. Eventually I glance up at the sun and, for a second, It coats me like a thin veneer. Everything is well And I look down at my hands and they’re glowing. I remember vaguely that I’m not asleep And it all strikes me as very strange. The radio asks me, blithely, “Have you ever been? To Electric Ladyland?” I chuckle and my eyes float back into my skull And all I can see is the pinkness Of the grey ocean, and I’m swimming in it. I float on my back and feel okay.
Gil Young 39
Sisters My sister’s hair got tangled in my fingers and I pulled it. I don’t know why. I pulled it, and I didn’t stop. She was screeching. I don’t know. I didn’t stop. Maybe it’s because we were on a family trip to the jungle, and we were bored as hell on account of the lack of electricity. The bird noises were chronic; the mosquito bites didn’t stop. Maybe I was going a little crazy. She told me to let go; I didn’t. So she screamed. “I hate you!” The words spilled out slowly and spitefully, but I knew what they would be even before they had formed. I began to cry on impact. “What the hell? She’s my sister! Dad! Dad! Do you hear this? She’s my sister. She can’t say that, she’s my sister!” My dad began reciting. “She’s seven years younger than you, damn it, she’s seven years younger.” He meant “get over it,” but he is much too kind a man. He left the room. I stared at her. I tried to really stare at her. You know, mess with her soul – that kind of stare. But my eyes met hers, and my glare went nowhere; her eyes were dancing. It’s sick, really, that she’d consider herself triumphant, but when your little sister’s eyes are dancing and she’s next to you with wet hair and blue eyes and you’re leaving home next year, you hug her and you mean it. We stayed on the bed a while, not talking until we had something to say. My dad came back in the room and looked at us, puzzled. “You were just fighting two seconds ago. How are you guys okay now?” I stared up at him and rolled my eyes. “She’s my sister, Dad.” The next day the plane arrived at LAX too early in the morning. My sister and I were fighting again. My mom opened the door to our house and said groggily, “Welcome home.” My sister and I met eyes and shrugged. We’d never left home. We’d never leave. Deborah Malamud
40
WorryWart Wendy Chen